“Yeah.” He had to clear his throat. “She is.”
“Does she know...?”
“That I’m investigating her dad? Yeah. She understands. If I have to arrest him, though...” He discovered he was hunching his shoulders and had to consciously relax them. “That wouldn’t be so good.”
Mom nodded. “I’d like to meet her.”
“Soon,” he promised. “Mom...”
The doorbell rang.
When she started to rise, he shook his head at her and went to pay. He brought the box back, opening it in the middle of the table. Mom, of course, had produced plates and napkins and even forks and knives, although he was pleased to see that after watching his example—grab and eat—she didn’t bother with fork and knife, either.
He wondered if she was bracing herself for the conversation they both knew they had to have, or whether she was in deep denial. Despite that underlying tension, talking to her felt easier than it had in some time. Maybe the blowup had unlocked something. At the very least, it had revealed to him anger and frustration with her he hadn’t let himself admit he felt.
When she declared she’d eaten enough, he flipped the lid of the pizza box closed and sat back.
“You know you need counseling,” he said flatly, but with an effort at gentleness.
Rebellion flared on her face. “You’re creating a problem where there isn’t one.”
“When’s the last time you left the house?”
Her mouth pinched.
“Drove yourself anywhere?” he continued inexorably. “Even took a real walk?”
“I’m managing nicely.”
“Holed up here at home.”
“Why does that offend you?” she asked tightly.
Troy leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. “It doesn’t. It worries me. That’s not the same thing. How often do you see friends, Mom? At first they’re okay dropping by the house, but eventually they’ll be insulted if you aren’t willing to come over for dinner or meet them downtown for lunch. Remember the walks you and Dad took almost every evening? He’s not here, but a part of him would still be walking beside you if you’d only go.”
Her face began to crumple. He felt cruel, but made himself keep going.
“You’re living half a life, stuck on one city lot. You’re a reader—when’s the last time you went to the library? And—” These words caught in his throat. “What about me, Mom? Are you not going to come to my wedding? To be there for my wife if she needs you when our children are born?”
His mother was openly crying.
He swore and pushed back his chair, circling the table to bend and wrap his arms around her. “God, I’m sorry, Mom.” His voice was hoarse. “But this had to be said. You know it did.”
She wept, and he held her.
* * *
MADISON HAD LISTENED in silence. “It was a start,” she said finally, when he’d wound down.
“I don’t know. All she said was that she would think about counseling.”
She laughed a little, shaking her head. “You wanted her to pick up the phone and make an appointment, preferably for 8:00 a.m. this morning.”
“You’re making fun of me,” Troy accused her, suppressing his own smile.
“Yes, I am. Give your mother time to, er, work up her nerve.”
“Or chicken out,” he muttered.
They sat on the flat rim of the fountain in the courtyard outside McKenna Sports Center. The same fountain where Joe Troyer had waited, irritation growing, thirty-five years ago for Guy to show up.
Troy was not here as part of his investigation. When he’d suggested dinner tonight, Madison had persuaded him to go swimming with her.
“I haven’t been getting enough exercise,” she’d said firmly. “All you and I do together is eat.”
He wasn’t a great swimmer. She scoffed at his suggestion he meet her here after she swam. He might have persisted except for one thing she said.
“You sound like my father. You don’t want to do anything you’re not really good at.”
It wasn’t even the words so much as her tone of voice that convinced him. Troy knew one thing, no ambivalence: he didn’t want to be like her father in any way that made her sound like that.
So he sat there, gym bag at his feet, prepared to make a fool of himself if necessary to prove that he was man enough to display his incompetence in front of the woman he loved.
“You’ll feel better after a swim,” Madison informed him, and stood up.
Reluctant, he followed her. Inside, she signed them in at the counter and pointed out the door to the men’s locker room before looking chagrined when she presumably remembered he was well acquainted with this building.
It actually felt kind of strange to walk in, choose a locker and open it with a metallic clang, then start to undress in the middle of what he thought of as a crime scene. He could see the showers at the end of the aisle; the sauna was barely out of his line of sight. The place was, at least temporarily, deserted, which gave it that hollow, echoing feel. He had to keep reminding himself the crime was a very old one. He knew for a fact that investigators at the time had all but gutted the sauna in their search for trace evidence and blood that wasn’t Mitch King’s. The college would have finished gutting the room and built it fresh. No one would have wanted to look at the bench and wonder whether those boards had only been scrubbed clean. Troy wondered how often the sauna had been used until a crop of new students arrived the following year.
Wearing swim trunks, he reluctantly went into the pool area. The water lay placid; the only other person in here was a bored lifeguard sitting on a bench to one side of the pool, a textbook open on his lap. He barely glanced up before returning to his reading. This was dinnertime in the residence halls, Troy realized. No wonder he and Madison had the place to themselves.
He dropped his towel on a bench and even more reluctantly approached the edge. Behind him he heard the creak of a door and turned to see Madison walking across the deck toward him. The sight of her sucked the air right out of his lungs.
Her suit was her favorite fire-engine red, thin and as formfitting as a second skin. So snug, in fact, that the fabric tried, not very successfully, to flatten her generous breasts. It was a one-piece, high in front and leaving her shoulders free. The legs were cut well up on her luscious hips.
Troy was almost struck dumb.
“You’re beautiful,” he blurted hoarsely when she got close enough.
“I...um... Thank you.”
He finally dragged his gaze up to see that her face was pink and she was either being shy and not meeting his eyes—or was fixated on his chest. Which she had yet to see bare, he realized.
“Um...shall we?” Madison fluttered a hand toward the pool.
He pulled himself together with an enormous effort. “We could call it good and just go to dinner,” he suggested.
Madison giggled. “Not a chance.”
She took the couple of steps to the pool ahead of him, giving him a too-brief opportunity to ogle her spectacular ass. Then, without pausing, she dove in, cutting the water’s surface smoothly.
Well, shit, he thought, reminded how desperately he’d hated having to dive during those long-ago, torturous swim lessons his mother had insisted on. Since he’d panicked every time, he had mostly belly-flopped. He’d gotten his certificate as an Intermediate swimmer, but barely. On the skill level chart, the check for “Diving” had been in the “Needs Improvement” box. Troy persuaded his mother thereafter that he swam well enough to be safe in the water and she’d surrendered, agreeing that he didn’t need to take any more lessons.
At the moment, he kind of wished she’d subjected him to another summer of them.
Madison had surfaced halfway down the pool and turned to look at him. Her dark hair, captured in a ponytail, was slicked to her head, making the curve of her forehead more obvious and letting her eyes dominate her face.
He jumped in. Not quite a cannonb
all, but there was plenty of splashing. Damn it, he still didn’t much like water in his eyes.
Laughing, she swam back to him with an easy head-up crawl stroke. “Doesn’t the water feel good?” she called before she reached him.
“Sure. Great.” Then he grinned. Actually, it did feel good. He’d been overheated all day, and the water was cool without being cold as it slipped over his skin. He bent forward and dunked his head then straightened and flipped his hair back. “You can swim laps if you want,” he said hopefully.
“Oh, I might do a few.” She smiled at him. “But first I want to see you swim.”
“It’s not a pretty sight,” Troy warned her.
A smile played with her mouth. “How long since you’ve been swimming?”
“I go to the lake most summers.” Frenchman Lake was deep and heart-stoppingly cold, but swimming out to the floating dock could be exhilarating in the heat of July or August. He could make it okay, and at the lake no one paid attention to swimming form.
“Oh, good.” She lay back and floated, her legs splayed and her arms spread wide. She was still watching him, and—damn it—he was suddenly, excruciatingly aroused. He wanted her on his bed in exactly that pose—minus the red swimsuit, however good it looked on her.
In self-defense, he made himself push forward and start swimming. Floating wasn’t an option. Maybe he had too much muscle, he didn’t know, but he tended to sink like a rock if he wasn’t in motion. So he turned his arms over, kicked hard, held his breath and—to his mild surprise—crashed into the other end of the pool before he ran out of air.
He grabbed hold, blinked chlorine-laden water from his eyes, and saw Madison’s last couple of clean strokes before she reached his side and grinned at him.
“You’re not that bad. Except...did you breathe?”
“Never was very good at that part.”
She only laughed at him, but not in a way that made him feel as if she was making fun of him. Instead, she teased him until he chased her back and forth half a dozen times, talked him into cannonballing off the diving board, and played shark to his dumb, slow-moving human act. There was no way in hell he could catch her if she didn’t let him. Water, he thought, was her element.
A couple of times he looked up to see the student lifeguard watching them with an expression of disbelief. Apparently swimmers at McKenna Sports Center swam dutiful laps rather than playing in the water. When Troy finally did end up with an armful of wet, slippery woman in his arms, he thought, Bet you’re jealous now, and planted a brief kiss on her mouth.
“Can we go have dinner now?” he asked hopefully.
She chuckled. “You sound like a kid. Are we there yet?” She had the whine down pat. “Come on, didn’t you have fun?”
“Yeah,” he said with a laugh. “I did. You know, it’s still warm enough we could go to the lake this weekend. Take lunch.”
Her utterly glorious smile rewarded the suggestion. “I would love to do that. And yes, Detective Troyer, we can get out now and go to dinner.”
At the side of the pool, he gestured her ahead of him. “Ladies first.”
The red suit looked even better wet. The action of climbing the ladder did amazing things to Madison’s figure. So amazing, Troy had to swim one more lap before he could get out and appear decent with his trunks clinging all too obviously to his body.
In the men’s locker room, he heard voices at the other end, but was alone when he took a quick shower, toweled himself dry and dressed. Madison would take longer, he assumed. She had to put on a bra, after all, and would be bound to dry her hair, right?
Troy checked messages on his phone and found three. One was from a friend and fellow cop wondering if he wanted to go for a hike that weekend, and the other two were both from Wakefield College alums who had been fingered as possible blackmail victims.
The second of the two was from Senator Gordon Haywood. No over-the-top bonhomie in his voice, not the way he’d exuded it as he wooed classmates and potential future presidential voters—or while he was giving thought to climbing right into Madison’s cleavage. Nope, he sounded tense and hushed.
“I can’t imagine what questions you imagine I can answer for you, Detective, but please call in the evening when I’m at home. I’m too busy during the day.” That was it.
He was definitely nervous, which pleased Troy more than it should. Can’t be prejudiced just because I don’t like him. But he couldn’t help indulging in a brief, wistful fantasy of arresting the self-righteous senator for the long-ago murder. Possibly fun, he thought, but unlikely. Although...if Haywood had had political aspirations even back then, he would have had more to lose than most students if King had caught him in a peccadillo.
Food for thought.
Troy strolled out of the locker room and was joined only a minute later by Madison.
“What’s with that expression on your face?”
“Suspicious woman.”
“You look too pleased with yourself.”
Troy laughed and kissed her, despite the presence of several other people in the corridor. “Maybe I’m just happy to be with you.”
She wrinkled her nose. “It wasn’t that kind of pleased.”
He relented and told her he’d had a couple of messages from people he’d been trying to reach about the King murder. “One’s been especially elusive.” He held open the outer door and let Madison go ahead of him.
“Can you tell me who?”
This was a conversation he’d been avoiding having. He was well aware he had told her too much in the beginning stages of the investigation. He wanted to talk it all out with her, but he’d been keeping the names to himself.
“I’d better not say.” He steered her toward the street where he’d parked his SUV and unlocked the doors.
“I suppose I understand,” she said, then gave a heavy sigh. Half theatrical, half not, he suspected.
Once they were both seat-belted in the Tahoe and he was turning the key in the ignition, he said, “They’re both people who may have been additional blackmail victims.”
“There were a couple of stuffed shirts at that reunion I wouldn’t mind finding out had feet of clay.”
Troy shot her a startled look. Good God, had her mind leaped to the estimable Senator Haywood? He carefully composed his face to give nothing away if she mentioned the guy.
Instead she asked where they were eating.
“How about my place? I have a couple of chicken breasts I could grill.” Having had an optimistic moment, he’d left them marinating in the refrigerator. The glass-half-empty part of him figured he had dinner ready to cook tomorrow night if she shied away from setting foot in his lair.
Her expression was a little surprised, a little wary, but she nodded. “If you’re sure you want to cook.”
“I want.” After a glance over his shoulder, he accelerated away from the curb. “I’m only renting,” he said after a minute.
“A house?”
“Town house. One of those places out on Narbonne.” French Canadian trappers had left their legacy on Frenchman Lake in other ways than the obvious. The nearby creeks, mountains, canyons and streets had a confusing mix of English, Nez Perce and French names.
“You didn’t want to buy?”
“I guess I was hedging my bets,” he admitted. “I liked the idea of coming home, but, hell, I might’ve gotten so crazy bored, six months later I’d be ready to run screaming back to the big city.”
“And yet, two years later—or is it three?—you’re still here.”
“Yeah.” Momentarily, he brooded. Truth was, he hadn’t at any time thought, I guess I’m staying. Maybe I should buy a house. The town house was okay, familiar. It served his needs. He hadn’t needed a real home. Because I had one, he was surprised to realize. Until Dad died.
Since then... He hadn’t thought about it. Hadn’t cared. A man alone didn’t tend to nest, not the way women did.
Now all he wanted was to pack up his things and
move into Madison’s cozy house. It already felt more like home than his place did. He’d even noted with interest that she had a good-sized shed in her backyard, plenty big enough to become a ceramic studio.
The drive was short, as pretty much any drive in Frenchman Lake was. Madison gazed with interest at the stretch of two-story town houses, each painted a distinctive color. Each had a single car garage in front and a patio in back screened by six-foot fencing on each side. The tiny yards, front and back, had been landscaped with bark and shrubs when he moved in. Someone came around and renewed the bark each spring. Troy cringed a little at how sterile his place looked compared to hers.
He parked in the driveway and let them both in the front door. The interior was one room wide—bottom floor had living room, dining area and, open to it, kitchen. Tucked under the stairs was a powder room. Translation: toilet and sink, with barely enough room to pull up your pants. Upstairs were two regular-sized bedrooms, a smaller one that was a home office, one bath, laundry room. The layout had more than a passing resemblance to the shotgun houses in New Orleans.
Troy winced again as Madison looked around with open interest, taking in his only decent furniture: a big leather sofa and leather recliner. Her gaze paused on the cheap bookshelves and even cheaper TV stand. He had one nice picture, a big framed photo of an autumnal forest scene, given to him by a girlfriend. He was ashamed that he couldn’t remember which one.
“Very bachelor,” Madison pronounced.
“I’m afraid so. No dirty socks or empty beer cans lying around, though,” he pointed out.
“True enough.” She smiled at him. “Did you clean up for me?”
Actually, he had, but mostly that consisted of running the vacuum cleaner around and mopping the kitchen floor, something he didn’t often do. “I’m pretty neat,” he said. He frowned, thinking about it. “I wasn’t as a kid. I collected stuff. When I was little it was action figures, you know, whatever toy I was obsessed with. I went through a rocks and minerals phase that took over until my mother banned them to the garage.”
“Speaking of, where’s the ceramic studio?”
“That would be in the garage. You notice I didn’t park in there.” He started toward the kitchen. “Let me start the charcoal, and I’ll show you if you want.”
Wakefield College 01 - Where It May Lead Page 18
